Email server down for maintenance 7-8 AM Friday

The GroupWise Server will be down for maintenance tomorrow morning (Friday, October 31) beginning at 7:00 a.m. for about 1 hour. E-mail will be unavailable during this time as well as the WebAccess page. Please refrain from trying to login or check mail with the internal client during this time.

Moodle updates

The Info Tech Literacy Teachers spent all day Thursday getting trained on Moodle. Our trainer was a social studies teacher from Sun Prairie who is a Moodle Certified Trainer.

Based on her extensive experience and best practices, we have made some changes to our Moodle site. You'll notice some changes to the front page to make it easier to find courses. We have added a "site news" section on the front page to inform you of changes, and are working on many other enhancements to make Moodle more effective and easier to use.

Please feel free to give us feedback as we develop this powerful learning tool.

Internet outage 9-10 PM Monday night, 10/27

The district's Internet connection will be down from 9-10 PM tonight (Monday, October 27) for planned router maintenance. During this time, all Internet traffic an and out of the district will be unavailable. This means Citrix, email, PowerSchool, and web access will be unavailable.

If anything bad happens, we'll post status updates here.

Moodle update

Moodle is now back to full functionality. The problem turned out database corruption. It is now repaired and back to normal.

Virus and spyware threat: "Statement of fees"

Some users have received an email message with a zip file attached. The subject is "statement of fees." Please do not open the file or forward to us. Just DELETE immediately. Here's a screen shot of the mail received:

 

 

Some indications that this is an attack:

• the return address is from a foreign domain (bradteal.com.au)
• wording is pretty vague and generalized, but implies some time-sensitive pressure "this will be posted today"
• you have no idea who "Cherry Sylvester" is

Oregon's Tech Roadmap

IT Roadmap Summary

This is a very brief summary of the plans over the next two years regarding IT systems. This isn't a comprehensive list by any means; these are just the things I get asked about often.

Google Calendar on OregonSD.net

• All administrators required to use it now.
• Available to all staff now.
• Principals can require it of staff on their own timeline.

District email migration to Gmail

• People can begin using Gmail to check their Groupwise mail now, if they want.
• Spring 2009 training to train staff how to use Gmail.
• Full migration summer 2009, Groupwise will be discontinued.

Online video services

• Discovery Streaming is current offering.
• Some interest in exploring Safari Montage.
• Is there interest in a formal assessment?

Bandwidth

• Migrating by end of month from 10 Mbps over BCN to 20 Mbps dedicated fiber.
• Experimental proxy caching server (e.g. squid) in winter 2008
• Possible full squid implementation summer 2009

Building AV systems and CATV

• Prepare for local cable access channels and TV to not be required by franchise agreement.
• Winter 2008- develop alternative delivery systems.
• Summer 2010- all classrooms have large, digital, SVGA-compatible displays (plasma, LCD screen, LCD projector, or DLP projector), through various funding sources (TIP, building, district)
• Summer 2010- video distribution system implemented to replace current analog system.

Wireless LAN

• 802.11n final spec ratification expected November 2008
• Phase 2 network infrastructure deployment spring 2009
• 802.11g managed APs deployed to elementary schools
• 802.11n managed APs installed in RCI, OMS, OHS
• All plans are dependent upon funding, which has not yet been approved.

Moodle server is back up

Server is back up, but there is still the unresolved issue of the Participants page showing zero participants. This seems to be affecting all classes.

This does not affect how a student can log in to the class- they can still access everything they need to.

The workaround for teachers is to go into individual assignments, where teachers can still view submitted assignments, grade them, and post comments. Teachers can continue to post new assignments.

Work on this problem over the weekend did not resolve it. The IT staff is continuing to investigate the problem, but we have not found the cause, so we cannot provide an ETA for resolution.

Further updates to be posted on this site.

Moodle server is down

MAP testing complete

MAP testing is complete. Antivirus software is being re-activated on all computers and servers. Hopefully nobody contracted anything really dangerous while it was turned off. That still freaks me out that we have to do that.

Monthly (sorta) review

Since the first day of school, the IT Department has closed an amazing 740 helpdesk tickets. That's roughly 25 per work day, which is really high. This week, the backlog finally went under 100.

This might be normal- this is the first year we've had the GLPI helpdesk to track our work at the beginning of the school year. Even if it has always been this much work at the beginning of the year, it still seems like a ton.

Some projects got postponed due to an overload of summer projects. Destiny upgrades, SmartBoard installation, sound system installation, parent newsletter email system, ITIL databases, Groupwise migrations, disk-to-disk backup systems, virtualization projects, and Internet connection upgrades all had to be put off. We are finally catching up now and able to look ahead at these projects for the coming year.

Thanks for everyone who waited patiently (and even not so patiently) for us to resolve your issues and work on your systems.

Internet access planned outage Monday, 10/13, 9-10 PM

Internet access will be down from 9-10 PM on Monday, October 13, while the IT staff moves a router. This is in preparation to cutover to a faster Internet link. During this time, all Internet access will be cut off.